Cleeve: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Keep your engine and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Around Cleeve, finding it before your engine runs usually leaves draining and a thorough flush where it stands. Reading in advance? Then the rest covers why it comes about and what to stop it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel car, and its separate tank
Diesel feeds your engine — yet plenty of current diesels driven round Cleeve and Moulsford hold a second liquid too. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
There's a filler on each tank. Some motors keep the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; plenty more have the two side by side behind one flap. Diesel goes in on every forecourt visit, again and again. Rarely topped up, AdBlue usually goes in out of a bottle, tipped by someone who has to stop and think what cap to use. The error lives in that gap.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Cleeve: how it takes place
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
Hurry comes from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a drive off Middle Springs, or on the way home in the car park outside The Miller of Mansfield.
Next, the hand goes for the cap it knew on the old car — since a rental car, a new vehicle or a company car places the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
A spouted bottle finds no resistance at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, once started, carries on. Whether it takes place in Goring or the middle of Cleeve, it is the same few seconds.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A few seconds is all the checks take — so check them before you pour anything, on a driveway in Stitchens Green or a forecourt around Cleeve.
- Check the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue caps are frequently blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of motors, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where your filler sits if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Goring & Streatley.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
On the day the warning comes on — anywhere it is across Oxfordshire — a routine to use.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Icknield Place.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — after you've found your filler and read it.
- The diesel cap remains on. When both share a flap, make sure it's shut before the bottle comes up.
- Stop once your tank fills or the bottle is empty; until then, pour slowly through its own spout.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Find at step two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? Then stop right there. Don't carry on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Cleeve already?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start your motor. Keep your ignition off too, because on plenty of diesels it alone starts the pump. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is pulled from — so do not top up with diesel to thin it.
At a forecourt — JET, Texaco or any other — the staff will normally help push the car away, if you ask. Leave it where it is if you are on your own drive in Cleeve.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your engine has already run. Leave the M4 — under 5 miles out of Cleeve — at the first exit. Mileage counts — a quick hop across Cleeve makes a smaller job than heading under 25 miles towards Oxford — so say about how far it went.
Our arrival in Cleeve, and what takes place next
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Goring Church of England Aided Primary School, near Storton Lodge or on your own drive. What fluid went in, the amount, and if it ran: our engineers ask since the replies decide the work and price. You get that price by phone, before anyone heads out.
Draining your tank comes next, followed by a thorough flush of the fuel system. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at some fuel-system metals, and none of it clears out by itself. Hence it matters more. Filter flushed or, where it must be, swapped; clean diesel in; then a test of your car. The motor is started next and checked to be sure it runs properly, all before our engineers leave.
If your engine has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Cleeve, briefly
Cleeve is a suburban area in Oxfordshire, situated on the banks of the River Thames at an elevation of 52 metres. Cleeve lies within commuting distance of Oxford, approximately 16 miles to the north, and is also close to the nearby villages of Goring and Streatley. Cleeve has a population of around 1849 residents, who mostly live in detached houses. Cleeve is located near the Chiltern Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and benefits from its scenic riverside setting.
AdBlue drains around Cleeve and across Oxfordshire
Being a residential suburb, Cleeve shares its vans surrounding places — Streatley, South Stoke — right through RG postcodes and the surrounding area around them. A postcode starting RG8 0 gets the van to you fastest.
Moving the car is not needed. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Gardiner Recreation Ground, a side street close to Goring Social Club: our technicians drain it where it is. Awkward to explain, like the back of The Arcade? By a county line? Checking beats assuming, and so phone.
The short version for Cleeve people
Pour nothing until you've read the cap. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it wherever it is, wherever around Oxfordshire: keep it off then ring 0333 366 0103.